Times are changing, my friends.


As I type, I am sitting in a mall in Kampala, using free wireless internet. It's a little cafe in the corner of the indoor parking garage, called the New York Kitchen.



They have cheesecake, bagels, pizza, and bottomless coffee cups. It has a
nice atmosphere, and I don't feel as much like I'm being asphyxiated
by gas fumes as I would have expected.


This would just have been unbelievable a couple of years ago.


It's a bit unbelievable now. I could be in America.


But now is not the time for being in America. No, that's tomorrow.


I'm going to the airport in 4 hours, leaving on a jet plane in 6.


24 hours of airports and Amsterdam later, I'll be in the US of A.


Home.


Not really.


:)

I was sitting on the floor playing guitar. Natalie was bouncing around from place to place, unable to stay still. The people all around us ate, talked, laughed, lived. The room full of people swirled around us, on and on and on, just like every Sunday night Bible study.

Then Natalie dashed over to me. She plopped down, and whispered something in my ear. I glanced at her, played another couple of bars of the Metallica song I was working on, and then nodded slowly. I said something to her, and she squeaked with excitement and jumped up. I stood slowly, pushing up on the coffee table to make sure I didn't hit my bruised knee, and set my guitar on its stand. I wandered into the kitchen where my mom was talking and cleaning and told her that I had a proposition. I told her about it, and she thought for a moment before she nodded. From there, it was a straight shot from Bible study to Mt. Elgon Hotel for our Sunday night cappuccinos.

Or so we thought.

There were 5 cars in our L-shaped driveway. I am a bit skeptical of my driveway escape skills when I'm driving our van (named Moby), so I backed straight out of the gate. As it turns out, that was pretty much the lousiest idea I've had in a while. See, it's been raining a lot, and it's muddy. Also, I haven't driven Moby recently, so I wasn't used to backing in it.

We got quite stuck a couple of meters outside the gate.

We called my dad and Stephan out to assist us, and they decided that they would use a tow cable to pull Moby out of its mud-stuckness. When they were working on that, everyone else came out to see what all the excitement was. When my mom came out, she immediately saw that a tow cable was not, in fact, needed, and she said so.

Disaster #1 averted.

We finally got to Mt. Elgon (quite a bit late) and I parked crooked but couldn't be bothered to fix it. We marched purposefully inside and up to the coffee bar (which is also the everything else bar, but I don't want to sound like we were alcohol-ing) and said "two cappuccinos, please sir." The bartender kept on drying the glass he was drying and ignored us. We asked again, and he informed us that his cappuccino maker was quite broken, so sorry please for us.

Now, I need to back up for a minute, back to my house and Bible study. We talked before we left about the fact that Mt. Elgon's cappuccinos, even though they taste good, are usually tepid and small. We decided to take a thermos of coffee and a thermos of hot milk with Irish Cream creamer mixed in. We planned to hide the thermoses and just give each other free refills on the coffee.

Too bad the cappuccino maker was broken.

We were faced with a dilemma. We had coffee, we had hot milk, but we had no cups or sugar. We returned to the bar and requested two coffee cups. The bartender told us that he would charge us for drinking our own drinks. After a short whispered conference, Natalie and I faced the bartender with renewed enthusiasm and drive. We ordered one mineral water, two coffee cups to pour it into, and some sugar, thank you very much please. It worked. We got our cups, we got our sugar, and we sat down to some great (and hot) coffee.

Disaster #2 averted. :)

I love Uganda. I love making memories like this. I love how much of a kick we get out of doing dumb things. I love that Natalie and I somehow manage to pull off our harebrained schemes, dodging the problems of stuck cars and broken cappuccino makers. I love looking back and realizing that even though our dilemmas have changed, we still have them and we still solve them.

Natalie Joy, I'm going to miss you. A lot. Thanks for being the second half of my brain. :)

1. I went to school today.
2. I didn't stay there.
3. Because I've decided that school is basically overrated after all, when all you really need to fulfill your life is to know that parabola is a disease and hyperbola is a worse disease.
4. I realized something I left out of my last entry.
5. That is, I biked a half marathon on Monday morning way back when it was still dark.
6. Riding down Republic Street in the dark is the weirdest feeling in the history of the world.
7. Oops.
8. Exaggeration. (about the weirdest feeling in the history of the world, I mean)
9. The non-parallelism of these numbered points ought to bother me.
10. But it doesn't.
11. The real reason I didn't stay at school is that my stomach felt a bit like there was a giant worm laying its eggs inside me.
12. The giant worm might be Laurie's fault. Thank you please.
13. Asher cracks me up. He's already a coffee addict - anytime he sees me drinking coffee, he comes up to me and says "Cwaffee? cwaffee?" It's so cute.
14. He does the same with chocolate, or "chocwit."
15. He's getting so big! He's like 18 months old!
16. It makes me happy that he's a bookworm - just like me. :)
17. My big plans for today consist of homework and hanging out with people under the age of 6.
18. There's generally less drama with them.
19. Besides, they're cuter.
20. I think 20 points is enough, since most of them say absolutely nothing.
20b. Here's a picture of Asher.
20c. Note the book.
20d. Over and out.



Edit: I just got back from CURE Hospital after a blood test. It was positive for typhoid. I don't actually have true typhoid, just something like it, but I'd appreciate prayers that I feel better soon!